A bit of soul baring is in order.
I am a gay man. I have been doing the work of building up a coaching business only through raw organic methods and word of mouth marketing since I became certified as a Life Coach.
I have been conflicted about establishing a niche thinking that I did not want to exclude anyone. But I have come to an understanding that a niche is more closely associated with setting up healthy boundaries than it is with creating an exclusive club.
I have coached straight business leaders, gay men, Christian women, artists and creative producers. All of these individuals have felt the transmission of my intuition and kindness and my willingness to treat them as resourceful people who can achieve successful outcomes.
This year I started a podcast where I narrowed my focus and my niche to talk about the importance of engaging with our creativity. I have written an article on how engagement can be seen as an antidote to loneliness and isolation. In my podcast I explore how creative engagement is so important to creating meaningful and purpose filled lives. You can listen to the Apple podcast Creative Engagement here. Or you can search for Creative Engagement wherever you listen to podcasts.
As I was setting this up I did hear of an artist who did not want to be included where others identified as LGBTQ+ and self selected to not participate. I assured them that there was no requirement to call out their sexual orientation. I honestly didn't feel that the topic or the questions were "too gay" that this question would even come up.
Recently I was contacted by an artist who then decided not to participate because, "it's not appropriate to appear if you are featuring LGBTQ artists". To be clear straight guests are featured as well as LGBTQ guests are frequently featured, but this artist didn't want to be on the same podcast.
So this helped me appreciate that my niche is doing the work I want it to do. It is establishing a boundary. If guests are not comfortable sharing their experiences within LGBTQ spaces, then it is correct that those guests are not appropriate for Creative Engagement.
I even made the point of asking a recent guest Nathan Otto what his perspective was as a straight man, and Nathan corrected me that he identified as a human. I so appreciated hearing that from a thought leader and a human who is focused on creating large scale cooperation in our current polarized world!
My hope is that we can all learn to activate and engage with our creativity, our curiosity and our artistry to learn more about ourselves and each other to the benefit of all beings.
